goodyman8 wrote:can anyone tell me where the populated areas are
You obviously haven't played a game like this before. You don't want to run into random strangers. This is like real life, except everywhere is a dark, dead end alley and every person you run into is a cold-blooded murderer.
Now that I've got your attention, no, not everyone is like that, but you need to remember that and anticipate it. For the number of players, it's a very large world. If you travel by boat enough, you'll run into people. There is a global chat available through the custom client by Ender (see The Wizards' Tower forum) and an IRC channel you can sometimes catch the devs in (though not often for the last few months due to work schedule).
Opinions expressed in this statement are the authors alone and in no way reflect on the game development values of the actual developers.